Month: April 2005

(Editor’s Note: Today’s review is brought to you by one of the Impulsive Buy’s original readers, Megan, who was kind enough to send me from Germany a bottle of Britannia Soliss Pear & Ginger Sparkling Water. She sent it because she wanted me to know what REAL sparkling water tastes like. Thanks, Megan!)

As many of you already know, my first experience with sparkling water was one I’d like to forget, but unfortunately, it will probably forever haunt me in my dreams…or when I get thirsty.

So it was with some trepidation that I tried the Britannia Soliss Pear & Ginger Sparkling Water from the United Kingdom.

After taking a hesitant first sip of the Britannia Soliss, the first thing that came to my mind was, â€œWhat the hell died in the Aquafina Sparkling Water to make it taste so damn horrible?â€

The Britannia Soliss was crisp and clean. It went down smooth. It had a nice distinguished pear taste, with a hint of ginger, which gave it some spice. But most importantly, it didn’t make me gag, it didn’t make me want to spit it out, and it didn’t taste like my tongue licked a fire hydrant. In other words, it was waaay better tasting than the Aquafina Sparkling Water.

Ever since taking that first sip, not only has my view of sparkling water changed, my whole view of the world has changed dramatically. The Britannia Soliss has lifted the blinders from in front of my eyes and it has made me see everything in a whole new light.

I no longer consider rain to be dismal and dreary. I now call it liquid sunshine. I no longer read Playboy only for the articles. I no longer see ALL the Baldwin brothers as B-movie actors, just Stephen, Daniel, and William. I no longer think of prostitutes as whores, I now think of them as sex professionals.

It’s like the world is anew.

One of the the things that caught me off guard with the Britannia Soliss was that they actually tell you where the got the water from on the label.

Britannia Soliss is a unique new range of drinks blending natural flavours and extracts with Spring Water drawn from a source at the end of the Pennine chain, with its protected environmental ensuring purity.

I got nothing of the sort from the Aquafina Sparkling. For all I know, some sweaty, hairy dude in adult diapers, sitting in a kiddie pool filled with sparkling water, might be filling each bottle with the water he’s sitting in.

Oh, I hope those bubbles in the water were from the carbonation.

Besides the taste, one of the best things about the Britannia Soliss was the price and size of the bottle. For only 99 cents, Megan picked up a one liter bottle (about 34 ounces).

If the Britannia Soliss and the Aquafina Sparkling were in the same school, the Britannia Soliss would totally be taking Aquafina Sparkling’s lunch money and giving it a wedgie every single day, because it’s much bigger.

Sure the Aquafina Sparkling Water has no calories, but the entire bottle of Britannia Soliss only had 15 calories. I could probably burn that amount while typing this review or…ahem…reading an issue of Playboy.

Of course, if there was one downfall of the Britannia Soliss, it would be the fact that most of us can’t get our hands on it here in the States. But if you happen to be in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, and you’re thirsty, I’d recommend the Britannia Soliss.

Item: Britannia Soliss Pear & Ginger Sparkling WaterPurchase Price: 99 cents (purchased by Megan in Germany)Rating: 4 out of 5Pros: Tastes helluva a lot better than Aquafina Sparkling, but what doesn’t. Crisp and clean taste. Made me change my mindset about sparkling water. Big-ass one liter bottle for less than a dollar.Cons: Might not be available in the United States, but it’s available in parts of Europe.

Sorry, no review today, but Iâ€™m bringing back an oldie, but goodie. Itâ€™s product election time! (Damn, I need a catchier name than that!)

For those of you who are new to The Impulsive Buy, every so often we hold a product election, which allows you, the readers, the decide what product The Impulsive Buy will review. The product election also allows me to get rid of a lot of empty boxes and bottles of stuff Iâ€™ve been meaning to review, but have been too lazy to.

Usually these product elections consists of two or three products. However, this one will be the biggest product election ever in the long, nine-month history of The Impulsive Buy.

In this election, you will be able to choose from FIVE candidates:
1. White Castle Microwaveable Cheeseburgers

2. Red Baron Carb Works French Bread Pizza

3. Cheer Dark Laundry Detergent

4. Glaceau Revive Vitamin Water

5. Cinnamon Roll Pop-Tarts

Like every election – well, almost every election – the candidate with the most votes will be declared the winner. The winner will be reviewed and the other candidates will be thrown in the trash or recycled.

If there is a tie, I am screwed.

To vote, just leave a comment for this post with your choice. Or you can email me with your choice in the subject line. Only one choice and vote per person.

Iâ€™ll be accepting votes until Sunday, May 1st. Sometime shortly after that, Iâ€™ll post the review of the winning product.

I thought I had accumulated enough good karma to prevent something like this.

I didnâ€™t have to open doors for those strangers. I didnâ€™t have to help those tourists who asked me for directions. I couldâ€™ve ignored them or said, â€œMe speaka no Englesh.â€

I couldâ€™ve laughed and pointed at all those people who fell, tripped, or slipped in front of me, instead of offering them help and seeing if they were all right.

But I didnâ€™t do it because I wanted to accumulate a ton of credits in my good karma bank account. I did all those good things just so I could avoid bad things, like eat a bag of Ruffles Light Potato Chips.

Oh, they tasted much like regular Ruffles and they were less greasy, but any product that turns my ass into a volcano canâ€™t be good. R-R-Ruffles Have R-R-Ridges! R-R-Ruffles Light Causes R-R-Rectal Er-r-ruptions!

If only I were bulimic, all the time spent on the porcelain bowl wouldâ€™ve meant something.

Although, I shouldâ€™ve known it was too good to be true. I knew there must have been some kind of catch. How can a potato chip be fat free and have half the calories of its regular counterpart, and yet still taste the same?

Well I found out the truth the hard way.

Who knew Olean was another name for Olestra?

Olean. Olestra. Oh crap…literally!

For those of you who are not familiar with the possible side effects of Olestra, they are: diarrhea, gas, and cramps. I experienced two out of the three, which no matter how you look at it, is a horrible ratio.

Hitting two out of three free throws…good. Getting two hits in three at bats…good. Getting two out of three Olestra side effects…bad…very bad.

I guess it didnâ€™t help I ate half of the bag in one sitting, while watching Behind the Music: Guns Nâ€™ Roses for the sixth time.

I noticed something was wrong when I started having lots of gas. If the amount of gas I was putting out could fuel cars, I couldâ€™ve easily dropped gas prices by a dollar.

Then came the constant trips to the bathroom. For two straight days, I attempted to go running, but within five minutes I found myself running to the nearest restroom.

It wasnâ€™t pretty. Even as I type this, Iâ€™m still experiencing some the effects of the Ruffles Light, which I finished off on Sunday.

What the hell do I have to do to earn enough good karma to prevent something like this from happening again? Do I have to get Jen and Brad back together? Take down Walmart? Or rescue Britneyâ€™s baby shortly after itâ€™s born?

If you donâ€™t think thatâ€™s nuts, I watched dangerous amounts of programming on the PAX Network, and when I say â€œdangerous amounts of programming,â€ I mean any amount over two minutes.

Still donâ€™t think I deserve a straitjacket? Well how about me watching hours of the Ashlee Simpson Show, then buying her album â€œAutobiographyâ€ from iTunes, playing it over and over again on my iPod, and learning the words by heart, so I can lip-sync them as well as she can.

However, the cereal bars were good and I saw my eBay purchase as a need for underwear and not as a sign of becoming crazy.

The cereal bars didnâ€™t taste much like the actual Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, even though they had the same crispy flakes and oat clusters the cereal has. I thought it wasnâ€™t as sweet as the cereal. However, these cereal bars were definitely better than the Honey Bunches of Oats with Real Bananas cereal, which The Impulsive Buy reviewed last year.

Besides being good tasting, these cereal bars are also sort of good for you. Each bar has as much calcium as a glass of milk and has nine other vitamins and minerals. However, this isnâ€™t special because the better-tasting Hersheyâ€™s SnackBarz I tried a few months ago, with its crispy rice, marshmallows, and milk chocolate, is a good source of calcium, iron, and seven essential vitamins.

Yahtzee!

Plus, the Hersheyâ€™s SnackBarz didnâ€™t make me do anything crazy, like eat in one sitting half a bag of Ruffles Light, with the anal-leakage-causing Olestra.

First it was the Enormous Omelet Sandwich and now it’s the Ultimate Double Whopper. Burger King, when are you going to learn that no matter how large your sandwiches are, they won’t ever compensate for your small penis.

Not everyone can have a HUGE wang like White Castle. So don’t try to be like Hardee’s, with his Monster Thickburger. He only made it because the huge SUVs and sports cars he bought couldn’t deflect ALL the attention away from his really small dick.

Besides, so what if you have a small dong. Subway has one too, but the difference between Subway and Hardee’s is the fact that Subway knows how to use it with the ladies. Remember it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean…and how long you go down on her.

Anyway, when I picked up the Ultimate Double Whopper, I felt really guilty about eating it on Earth Day last week Friday. On a day that people celebrated conservation and all life on this planet, I devoured half a pound of beef, two slices of American Cheese, several strips of bacon, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and mayonnaise, all in between a sesame seed bun.

It was gluttony at its greatest.

Fortunately, I didn’t eat it at one of the many Earth Day celebrations, because the beef alone would’ve made vegan hippies want to beat me down with their hemp bags.

The first thing I noticed about the Ultimate Double Whopper was its thickness. If you don’t have a big mouth or you aren’t an anime character, you might have a difficult time eating it. It may not look that thick in the picture above, but I had to do some squishing before sticking my chomps into it.

The Ultimate Double Whopper was very good, but this didn’t surprise, since I’m a fan of the regular Whopper. It had that familiar Whopper taste, but the extra beef patty, slices of cheese, and bacon made it also taste like a burger from such fine sit-down establishments with annoying versions of the birthday song, like Chili’s and TGI Friday’s. With all of that stuffed into a burger, the Ultimate Double Whopper was kind of messy, but most big burgers are.

Personally, I think the Ultimate Double Whopper is better than any of Burger King’s overhyped Angus Steak Burgers.

I’d post the nutritional values for the Ultimate Double Whopper, but it’s not available on the Burger King website, which means either Burger King is too afraid to post it or the Ultimate Double Whopper was a figment of my imagination, caused by the excessive calories, fat, and sodium from my McDonald’s Dollar Menu binge the other week.

Whether it’s real or not, I probably won’t be ordering another one anytime soon, because something like the Ultimate Double Whopper has to be ungodly unhealthy, but for those of you who are curious and don’t have any heart conditions, I’d recommend it.

Even if you have a small penis.

Item: Burger King Ultimate Double WhopperPurchase Price: $5.59 (with $1 off coupon)Rating: 8 out of 10Pros: Pretty good. Better than BK’s Angus Steak Burgers. Thick burger, unlike the size of Burger King’s penis.Cons: Pricey. Not something anyone should eat on a regular basis. People with small mouths might have trouble eating it. Kind of messy. White Castle has a bigger penis than I do.